By- Samyukta Narayanan
This is story about Mia, seventeen year old girl who gets into a car accident with her parents and her 10 year old brother. She survives the crash but is unconscious in the hospital and in critical condition. However, she is able to see and hear everything around her, even her own body.
The story revolves around her making the decision to stay and live or let go and die.
This story by Gayle Forman is told in a serious of flash backs where we get to see that Mia is a normal teenager, living in Oregon, with a bright although conflicted future ahead of her. She is a brilliant cellist with the prospect of going to Julliard, across country in New York, once she graduates.
She has a boyfriend, Adam, with a common passion for music, albeit opposite genres. In fact, if it weren’t for music they probably wouldn’t have got together, Mia starts noticing him stare at her while they practice. Her with cello, him with guitar. Adam’s future is also on the rise but in a very different direction. He is the lead singer/songwriter of a rock band on the verge fame.
If I Stay is a reminder of how short and innately sweet life is, and about how at the end of the day, or at the end of your life, the one thing you are always going to want to hold on to is the cherished memories of the people you love. The people who make life worthwhile.
Also, the writing of If I Stay by Gayle Forman is simply lovely.
Forman takes teenage love, teenage emotions, teenage dreams and writes about them in a way that is accessible to every age, and is still believable. The language is beautiful, the pacing perfect. The novel brings a reader through a vividly emotional description throughout Mia’s coma after the tragic incident of her family. Not only was the plot magnificent and original, the way that Forman captured a teenage girl’s struggles throughout family death and personal conflicts made Mia seem like such a realistic character with such genuine and heartbreaking emotions.
Forman’s diction really leapt off the page and will leave the reader in tears as the story progresses. I had particularly enjoyed the final scene in where Mia makes a concluding decision benefiting to herself, yet the emotional struggle of Adam asking her to stay had anchored Mia and brought her back to the reality.
Ultimately, this was a worthwhile read that kept me intrigued, as Forman’s character struggles really hits home for a teenage girl. I’ll strongly recommend y’all to read this novel.
Gyann Loaded 